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Notes -
Please stop blaming everything on the "liberal media" without even reading the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia article - "In 2010, the American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine". There was also https://old.reddit.com/r/altright, which has one capture in 2010 but only takes off in 2016. There were a lot of people who were far-right and explicitly called their movement "alt-right".
Browsing this stuff is a bit tedious - I use a combination of web.archive.org and pushshift's api and just read the json... but there's a lot of positive mention of white nationalism.
Amusing aside, one random post: "As a gay anarcho-capitalist and white nationalist (both are organically tied together), I find it quite annoying when I encounter vulgar, violent and vitriolic homophobia on the right. Such hateful focus on what people do in their intimate moments surely most be one of the most useless things one could spend their valuable time on. ..."
I appreciate you providing what I asked for here.
Here is the evidence of why I had this general perception. The Economist labeled Ben Shapiro as "alt right." Later retracted, which I was unaware so good for them.
Both can be true at once- that there were some people who called themselves the "alt right"... (which is why I asked my question,)
And the media and social media commentators have a tendency to paint with a broad stroke.
"This article has been changed. A previous version mistakenly described Mr Shapiro as an "alt-right sage" and "a pop idol of the alt right". In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement. We apologise."
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/03/28/inside-the-mind-of-ben-shapiro-a-radical-conservative
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